Rise of the Cerulean Duchess
by Project Phoenix Agent 003
Summary: For most of her life, Celia has been searching for her place in the world. Now, when her past suddenly comes back to haunt her, she may have just find it. But first, she'll have to survive the dangers that tore her family apart.
1. Vacation's Over

The _Pale Sierra_'s month long voyage across the skies of Iberra was coming to an end. After touring most of the continent, it was due to pull back into Mythport in just a couple of days. The final night of the trip promised to be a lavish party, but today, Celia was enjoying just relaxing. It was supposed to be getting cold back home, but this far south, the weather was perfect for lounging on deck in a wide brimmed hat and fancy new glasses meant to help keep out the sun, sipping a fruity cocktail through a straw.

"So Celia, what sort of whirlwind adventure are you off to next?" Gale asked. Gale was Celia's unofficial cruise buddy. She knew all the best drinks to order, and had a seemingly never ending supply of gossip.

"I don't know," Celia admitted, taking another sip from her drink. "I hadn't really thought about it yet. I'll probably have to find another map of the world and see where I haven't been yet."

"Is there anywhere left worth seeing?" Gale asked.

"Of course there is," Celia said. "I could travel the world for a thousand years and I wouldn't see it all."

Celia cast a glance overboard to the landscape of Iberra slowly passing by underneath the ship. Up here, towns looked small blurs of silver, connected by a shiny latticework that made up the railways. But all she could picture was the hundreds of interesting people and places and things that must be down there, waiting to be seen, explored, experienced. And this was just one continent. There was so much in the world. She wanted to see it all. Hear it all. Live it all.

_"Celia."_

"Hm?" Celia looked back to Gale.

"What?" Gale replied, confused.

The elven bard blinked. She could have sworn someone had said her name. And the voice sounded familiar. She stared at her half finished cocktail. Maybe she was over the drunk hump?

_"Celia. It's Dad."_

Celia froze, as memories came back. Rides on shoulders. Dancing by the fireplace. Being left behind. An argument in the woods. A conversation in a bar. The amount of times she'd tried to forget this. The word escaped her lips in a whisper.

"Dad..."

_"Whatever you do, stay away from the Library!"_

Celia recognized this magic. Had felt it more than once, though it was usually Irvil or Quarele's voice coming through. Stay away from the Library. Easy enough. Didn't even know where to find it. Plus her dad was there, and she'd been avoiding that connection for the last three decades. Sort of. Technically, he'd been avoiding her. Or, well, actually, neither of them knew how to find each other.

"Can do," Celia replied. She was just about ready to forget the conversation too. But then things kept going. A new voice came through. She recognized it too.

_"Whelp. Your father has failed. This Library is ours."_

Celia was shaking. She wanted to run, or shoot something, but Drake wasn't in front of her. He was in her head. So she sat in her chair, her blood cold as ice. And suddenly it wasn't glasses in front of her eyes. It was slats of a closet door.

And in that moment, Celia couldn't forget. She tried, she tried so hard. Every instant she pushed the memories down they just came right back. It wasn't working. It always worked. Why wasn't it working?

The fear settled deep into the pit of her stomach. Her fingers twitched, desperate to feel the comfort of a crossbow trigger and finding a cocktail glass. Vacation Celia was gone. She was back to who she was whenever she got into a fight. Words of an old friend came back to her, as they so often did.

_"It's okay to be scared, kid. Scared makes you dangerous."_

The half orc had always been a bit of a jerk. But he'd also been very right. In that moment, shaking in her seat, Celia felt very dangerous. And very done with feeling trapped in that closet. She wasn't Aime anymore. She was Celia Amakir.

The spell, she knew, would let her send a reply. As fear coalesced into anger and frustration, Celia knew exactly what to send back.

"I'm going to kill you."

"What?"

Celia blinked. "Oh. Not you, Gale."


	2. Old Faces

Finding the Library had taken longer than she'd thought it would. Who knew that an ancient abandoned secret monastery wouldn't be in any travel guides. It took a lot of asking around. A lot of lies, threats, and money. Gods had it taken a lot of money. But she had it. A way in.

At least, she was pretty sure she did. She just had to find it somewhere in the middle of all of this mist or, failing that, trudge all the way back to that village, grab the monk by the ears, and drag him to either show her where it was.

She was closing in on three hours of wandering the mountain, simultaneously losing her patience and amazed at herself that it had lasted this long, when she saw it. Embedded in the rocky side of the mountain was a door, bearing the unmistakable face of a dragon.

"If this is just some random ass dragon's lair again, I'm going to scream," she muttered to herself.

As she approached the door, glowing script appeared over the archway of the door. For a second, she had no idea what it said. But then the script shifted to Elvish, and she knew she was in the right place the moment she read it.

_Tell me a story._

Celia smiled, and reached into her bag to pull out a flute. It wanted a story? She had too many to count. But she figured she might as well go with the crowd pleaser. Drawing in a breath, she played. The melody was quick, sweeping, constantly shifting. If she'd come prepared, she'd have made sure to hire a vocalist to accompany her, and tell with lyrics the story of a battle with a madman on his murderboat. But Celia knew her music, knew she could carry the story all on her own with nothing but notes and soul.

And she was right. As the song continued, the script above the door grew brighter, and brighter. The eyes of the dragon started to glow. And with the final crescendo, there was a sound akin to roar in the metal of the door as they parted open.

Celia blew the final note of her song, smiled, and gave the door a bow. Fixing her hair, which always seemed to get tousled during that number, she tucked her flute away into its holster, and headed inside.

The doors pulled themselves shut behind her, leaving her in her sealed inside. Clear as day ahead of her were stairs, that seemed to climb up and up beyond the reach of her sight. But that wasn't what caught her attention. What drew her eye was the elaborate carving set into the wall. It was moving, slowly, but unmistakably so. It was an image of a dragon, coming to rest in a mountain range, its wings slowly beating as it came down to perch.

Celia had never seen anything quite like it before. Moving paintings, she'd seen. Ionoi kept an animated statue around sometimes. But animated carvings were new. And she found herself enraptured.

There were more as she progressed up the stairs. Elves bringing gifts to the dragon. The dragon forming its home. One elf deciding to bring the dragon not gold, but a story. And from that moment on, the dragon didn't collect gold. It collected stories. Books. Songs. Paintings. Scrolls. Anything with history or a tale to tell, the dragon wanted. Meanwhile, elves came to live with the dragon.

Celia was getting the picture. The carvings told the story of how the Library came to be. It made sense. New visitors should probably know something about the big important place they were coming to see. But then something caught her off guard.

She saw her dad. Well, she thought it was her dad. It was a carving of an elf, standing apart from all the other elves as they practiced their swordsmanship. Every other elf moved with precision, with purpose. But the one elf moved in a flurry of grace and razor edge. No. It had to be him. Celia had read and reread _The Thief and the Bladedancer _too many times not to know exactly what this must have looked like.

The next carving was another elf. A woman, leaping from the window with loot tucked under her arm. In the simple detail of the stone, Celia still recognized her mother. The Thief. And for a moment, she thought she knew what the next carving would be. The Thief, coming to the Library to steal its secrets, and the Bladedancer stopping her in the duel that doubled as their first dance.

But instead, it was a carving of her mother, sitting at a table. Across from her, hiring her from a job, was a dragonborn, with cruel features and a considerable bulk of muscle. A suspicion creeped up Celia's mind that she ignored as she kept climbing.

The next carving was almost what she expected. The Thief and the Bladedancer, blades locked. But instead of the kiss she was expecting to see, the tide of the fight changed. The Bladedancer won, had the Thief dead to rights. She was captured.

In the next carving, they talked. Argued. Angry and dismissive at first. But then there was a shift. Something passed between the two of them. The Bladedancer let the Thief go.

The next carving, the Thief was back with the dragonborn. They were arguing. The dragonborn went for her. She was fought hard. Got in a good hit. But she was losing. And then he was there. The Bladedancer, arriving on the scene. And the two of them, together, escaped the dragonborn and his men.

They were arguing again, in the next piece. Kissing in the one after that, but in a different place. Then, there was a child. And then, the dragonborn came back. Celia didn't even realize she'd been running up the stairs until she got to the end. Until she was staring at a carving of her father, giving his daughter to the closest thing his wife had to friends, and going into the world. Looking for something. And not finding it.

Celia backed away from the carving, staring at it. She backed away until she bumped into something, and then slid down it so she could sit down. She was confused. That wasn't how the story went in the books.

She sat there for a good few minutes, thinking. Eventually, she decided she wanted somewhere more comfortable to think, and with a few waves of her hand and whispers to the stone around her, assembled her cabin, and stepped through the interdimensional door.

The fireplace and comfy chairs waiting for her inside were an instant comfort. Having a home away from home in her back pocket was the best idea she'd ever had as a bard. And that was including that idea she was cooking up for a spell that could make someone dance against their will.

She took some rations from her bag, snapped her fingers to make them taste like fresh strawberries, and started eating in silence. For a few minutes, the only sound was the hearth in the cabin's wall. And then she broke the silence.

"What the fuck."

She didn't know what to do with this. Didn't know if this was something she should do anything with. She wasn't sure, and for the first time in a while, she felt the absence of the Circle. In the last year of traveling the world, she'd had no shortage of company. And people didn't treat her like a burden or a nuisance. Usually. They treated her like a superstar. A wealthy townmaster from a far away land. And when she got into trouble, she'd been healing, fighting, casting, and sneaking, all on her own. She hadn't needed their skills.

But right now, she really wished she had someone to talk to about this. Someone to listen to everything going on inside her head. But the only people she knew who wouldn't just run away screaming from all of this mess were all thousands of miles away.

"I miss you guys," Celia muttered to herself.

An idea sparked in her head, and Celia waved her hand. An image shimmered into existence in front of her, of Ionoi's face. The blue tiefling was just an image, and not a very complex one at that. There was only so much Celia could do with a cantrip. If she put more thought into it, she could have made it move, actually talk. But for the time being, static puppets would have to suffice.

"Hey Celia," Celia said, doing her best to mimic Ionoi's voice. "What's wrong?"

"Oh hey Ionoi," Celia replied. "I'm just feeling really weird and confused right now."

"Well why's that?" Minor Illusion-Ionoi asked.

"Well, it's just… I thought I knew the story of how my parents met, but now I'm thinking maybe I didn't, and I don't really know what's going on anymore or how I fit into any of this. Or anywhere," Celia said.

Celia paused. She didn't really know if Ionoi could be of much help. So snapped her fingers again, and Ionoi was replaced with a different friendly face.

"Don't be sad Celia," Minor Illusion-Ellaria said. "The world is a big and magical place, and we all have a place in it! I'm sure you'll find yours!"

"That's easy for you to say!" Celia complained. "You've got a whole people who look up to you as a hero, and you've got a boyfriend who'd do anything for you!"

Minor Illusion-Ellaria blushed furiously. "I-Ian's not my boyfriend! We're- we're just friends!"

Minor Illusion-Ellaria dispelled from embarrassment, replaced by an illusion of Theo. "Celia, you were given a medal by the Chancellor. You're a hero too."

"That doesn't count," Celia retorted. "We all did that. That was an us thing. And I was so out of it from the torture I barely even remember that! There's nothing that's mine. You've got Archimede, Neimand's got Bubs, Ionoi has Alice, Irvil's got a whole cult! I've got… no one."

Illusion Theo didn't have anything to say about that, so she left too.

_They're not here. And even if they were, they wouldn't help you. They don't understand you. They don't care about you._

Celia didn't know where the thoughts came from. They didn't sound like hers. But then again, maybe they were. For however much she wanted to have someone to listen to her, she was suddenly doubting that even the Circle could fill that role. That they would want to.

"Celia."

Celia looked up at Minor Illusion-Neimand. Funnily enough, even after everything that had happened with Sol, Celia still projected Neimand as her old, hornless, blue eyed self. And angry. Always angry.

"Quit being stupid," Minor Illusion-Neimand said.

"Why are you always so mean?" Celia asked. "I'm going through a lot of complex feelings right now and you're not being very supportive!"

"Celia," Minor Illusion-Neimand said. "Why did you come here?"

"I don't know," Celia said. "Finding my past or looking for a family or… I don't know."

"You came here to kill the bastard who killed your mother and ruined your life," Minor Illusion Neimand said. "Does anything you just learned change how much you want to do that?"

"Well, no, but-" Celia said.

"Then do what you came here to do," Minor Illusion-Neimand said.

Celia sighed, dispelling the illusion. She took out everything she thought she might need from her bag. Crossbow bolts. The resonant rapier. Daggers. A few healing potions. Minor Illusion-Neimand had a point. Whether or not she could find somewhere she belonged, she was pretty sure she could kill a dragonborn thug.


	3. Homecoming

Celia stood up from her chair, armed and ready, and with a final wave of her hand, the cabin around her was dispelled, and she was standing back in the stairwell, at the very top of the stairs. Another door stood in front of her, waiting. Text flashed across the archway once again.

_Tell me who you are._

"Celia," she introduced, waiting.

There was no response from the door. The text continued to glow. The dragon on the door seemed to stare at her, as if unimpressed. Celia tried again.

"Celia Amakir."

"Member of the Circle of CIN."

"Bearer of the White Crest."

"Bard of Valor."

"Aime Nialo?"

The door remained unresponsive. No change. It just stood there, waiting. At this point, Celia was getting upset. Extending a hand outward, she uttered a single command, and cast a shattering spell.

There was a great, thunderous crash that morphed into a deep, ringing gong from the metal as the force of the spell struck the doors, reverberated, and then came right back at Celia. The spell knocked her on her back, and she ended up lying on the ground, dazed and confused.

"It had to be a door," Celia groaned, pulling herself up off the floor.

She dusted herself off and approached again, only to find that her spell hadn't so much as made a dent in the metal.

"Really?" Celia snapped, groaning. She stared at the dragon's face embossed into the doors, at the hollow eyes that seemed to stare straight through her. She read and reread the text. _Tell me who you are._

"Oh my gods," Celia whispered. "I'm an idiot."

Once again, Celia drew her lute from her holster, trying not to feel too embarrassed about still calling herself a bard after not realizing what the door meant. It didn't want a name. It didn't want titles. It wanted the real, honest truth of who she was, who she understood herself to be. And there was only one way she knew how to convey that.

Celia prepared to cast through the flute as she positioned the instrument at her mouth, but she hesitated. Her heartbeat was fluttering. One of her knees was shaking ever so slightly. For the first time in years, Celia was feeling nervous before a performance, and it took her a second to figure out why.

It wasn't because the song she was about to perform was one she technically hadn't finished. Most of her songs were a mix of scribbled ideas and improvisation. But, she realized, this was her first time performing this song for anyone other than herself. Even though it was a door, it was someone. Something, at least. And that flew in the face of every instinct she had.

_"Never let anyone see the real you," Rose warned. "It always has to be the you that you need them to see. Anything else will give them an opening. Openings get you killed."_

If this door somehow used everything it was about to learn about Celia against her, she was going to be pissed. But one problem at a time.

Steadying her nerves, Celia played the first note. It came out, long and low and sad, and the song carried on from there. It was a melancholic, wandering tune. Moments of levity broke through, always hinting at the possibility of brighter things, but they were brief fleeting moments. More than anything, the tune was _lost_. It never seemed to focus, never quite found a path to follow. It was changing, searching, again and again. Nothing to anchor it down.

This was who Celia was.

Eventually, the song ended, and Celia stopped to catch her breath. Tears were streaming down the sides of her face. She blinked a few times, then wiped them away to see if the door was satisfied. It was. The door lit up, and with a deep rumble, the doors began to part. A shaft of silvery light creeped through the crack between the doors just before they opened, and wisps of fog begin to seep in behind it. Celia returned her flute to its holster and readied her dualbow, loading both both chambers, and slowly crept out the door.

Beyond the door, Celia found herself outdoors once again, high up in the mountains, still shrouded in fog. She was in a courtyard, or what was left of it. All around, stonework floor was cracked and uneven. Plants were overgrown, blackened, twisted, and covered in thorns. A fountain that might have once run with water now overflowed angry, caustic liquid that radiated a powerful acidic smell.

The courtyard was surrounded by other buildings, most of them the size of a small home, with one massive Oreian style castle at the head of all of it. And then she heard them. Wyverns. Dozens of them, circling the air above, some with riders, some free.

Immediately, Celia hid behind the first piece of cover she could spot, hoping she hadn't been seen. When none of them dove out of the sky to make her their lunch, she breathed a little easier. From her hiding spot, she took a better look at her surroundings, feeling less and less confident as she went.

Kobolds were running rampant, scurrying in and out of various buildings. Every now and then, she saw people, in either armor or robes. None of them looked like the Bladesingers that should have been here.

"Oh Dad, what have you gotten yourself into?" Celia whispered. And then, for just a moment, she saw a massive, winged silhouette pass overhead. She'd never seen one that big before, but Celia knew the shape of a dragon when she saw one. "This should be fun."


	4. In the Library

Meepo followed the rest of his companions through the maze of booky corridors created by the book place's seemingly endless shelves, doing his best to stick close to the others without being too out in the open. Move quickly, move together, stay out of sight. This was the way of the kobold hunting party.

The collection of four foot tall dragonlings scampered from shelf to shelf, keep their eyes and noses peeled for any sign of their quarry. Another intruder was digging in the book place. Another knife ear, like the one before. But this one was even more tricksy than the last. It liked to hide and climb.

All around the book place, kobolds were working furiously. Laying traps, running wires, setting up watches. But this would take time, time the knife ear would use to cause more trouble. So hunting parties were sent out. Some kobolds, some big folks, some dead folks. But all of them out in the stacks, searching.

There was a big reward for this knife ear. The Dead Midnight herself had promised gold. Magic. Eternal life. Well, the messenger of the Dead Midnight. But that was basically the same thing, and Meepo could do a lot with riches. And magic. And eternal life.

So caught up in thoughts of the reward, Meepo didn't notice Beema, the best archer in the brood, disappear from the group. It took someone else coming to a halt mid scurry, looking around, smelling her absence.

The party stopped in its tracks, calling out to each other. One by one, everyone in the party called out their name, signaling they were still there. Still alive. But Beema said nothing. Someone called out to her, but there was no response. Meepo couldn't smell her. She was nowhere near.

A spiderweb shot out from a bookshelf, latching on to another kobold and yanking it into the shelf hard enough to knock it unconscious. Everyone else in the party cried out. Those who had arrows or throwing spears loosed them blindly, hoping to get lucky. Nothing seemed to do the trick, but an instant later two more kobolds dropped to the floor, crossbow bolts embedded in their chests.

Finally, someone spotted the source of the danger. It was tall and thin, dressed in blue with big pointed ears sticking out of either side of its hood. The knife ear. Those kobolds who'd held out on loosing attacks before did so now, only to watch the knife ear dodge them, or see them bounce off of its armor.

In a panic, Meepo loose his own crossbow bolt, and then fled to take cover in the closest bookshelf as the others similarly turned tail and ran. Most escaped. But an unlucky few became trapped in a massive spiderweb that appeared in front of them, filling the space between two shelves. The knife ear waved its hand, and there was a loud crashing sound. In stunned silence, Meeop watched the spiderweb and every kobold trapped inside it explode into a shower of gore and gristle. A speck of it landed on Meepo's face.

For a moment, as the knife ear surveyed its handiwork, Meepo was worried he would be spotted. But then, a miracle. The sound of the struggle had attracted other hunting parties, including some tall folks.

Meanwhile, the surviving kobolds from Meepo's party were regrouping, preparing to join the others in a was the moment. Now, they had it.

* * *

Celia swore, in Infernal for the hell of it, as several cultists and kobolds began to close in around her. For what felt like the hundredth time this week, she'd gone from hunter to hunted. She was supposed to be _good _at this ambush thing. This was starting to be embarrassing. It was already annoying.

Kobold crossbow bolts and spears came raining toward her from the tops of bookshelves and through slits between books. It was impossible to block them all, even with her shield out. Her armor took most of the hits. At least one bolt managed to pierce through, and she felt the dull sensation of pain through her adrenaline. She had to move.

With surprising grace from someone with a crossbow bolt stick out of her, Celia backflipped away, landing on the side of a shelf and running up it with the aid of the spider bracers. There was no time to pull out her crossbow as she crested the top of shelf, and anyway, the shield was to valuable for the moment.

So instead, as she got to the top and found kobolds waiting for her, she drew her rapier, and with one swipe cut them down. Sheathing the blade, she turned to the cultists drawing a bead on her. Several of them were readying javelins.

Celia was faster, firing a series of web shots from the bracers that managed to bind the javelins into the cultists' hands before they could throw them. One cultist though, wasn't throwing a javelin.

Instead, uttering a few angry, draconic sound phrases, the cultist extended his hand, and a bright orange beam of light shot out from his hand. Celia ducked, and it passed over her head to strike a balcony railing on the second floor, where it splashed across the wood an almost instantly ate it away.

Acid lasers. Because of course. Running out of ideas, Celia traced her fingers across her flute, willing air through its passages and picking out just the right note from it. When she had it, she threw her hand out, casting another shattering spell. This time, her target was the bookshelf closest to the cultists.

The base of the shelf turned to splinters, and the tomes and scrolls contained in it were scattered. A moment later, the shelf came crashing down, crushing the cultists underneath it. It also slammed into the next closest shelf, and domino effect began to ripple outward. Celia sprinted and leaped, desperately trying to outrun it, until eventually she was out of shelves to leap to and dove straight for the closest wall, sticking to it.

Pausing to catch her breath, she looked back on the mess she'd left behind. Dozens of shelves in the stacks now lay toppled, their contents strewn about. All around the library, she could hear footsteps of other search parties closing in on the noise. Shaking her head, she climbed away from the scene, keeping to the ceiling and any dark corners she could find.

It took almost half an hour of skulking around, but eventually, the sound of footsteps and shouts seemed to be getting further away. For the moment, she was safe. Rappelling down from the ceiling on strand of webbing, Celia sat down on top of a bookshelf, and took stock of herself.

Her side hurt. Why did- oh, right.

Grabbing hold of the crossbow bolt, Celia started humming the beginning of a healing spell. Then, just before she cast it, she yanked out the bolt. Luckily for her, the spell only needed a vague vocalization to work, and the muted sputtering of pain she gave counted, even if it was slightly undignified.

"Well," she muttered. "This is going well."

Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the scrap of paper she'd been using as a map. Celia wasn't much of a cartographer, and the library seemed like it didn't give two shits about the laws of space and dimensions, so the map wasn't particularly well drawn.

In fact, of late it had descended into a series of boxes connected by lines, with most of the boxes being labeled things like "books," "more books," "even more books," "how are there this many books," "I met a ghost here once," and "not books (jk it's books)." With a heavy sigh, Celia drew an X threw another one of the boxes that she was _pretty sure _corresponded to the part of the library she'd just finished searching.

"Dad, where are you?" Celia whispered.

She'd been at this for two days now, skulking around in the library, searching, and coming up with nothing but cultists, kobolds, a bunch of undead and spirit things she only sort of understood, and the occasional pile of wyvern poop. One of which she'd stepped in. She needed a break.

Lacking a better idea, and genuinely curious what she'd find, she leaned down, and plucked a book from the shelf underneath her. Just her luck, it was written in a language she couldn't read, and this time, it didn't have the decency to translate itself into Elvish like the markings on some of the signage and doors tended to.

But then something happened as she thumbed through the pages. A gust of wind escaped the pages, hitting Celia in the face. It was warm, and for a second she felt like she was back on the _Pale Sierra_ as the feeling of the sun kissed her skin and the subtle smell of clouds filled her nose.

A surge of awe and determination gripped her chest, and the bookshelf she was sitting on stopped feeling static. It felt alive, moving, twisting. And all at once, she wasn't in the library anymore. She was riding on the back of a dragon across an early morning sky. All around her, other flying creatures- wyverns, griffons, pegasi -swarmed.

Just as quickly as the scene came, it was blinked. She was back on the bookshelf, in the dim interior of the library stacks. The feelings subsided. She stared down at the book, and found she could read it.

"What the hells?" Celia wondered aloud.

_Ah the battle of Varcuo. I remember it well!_

"Who is that?" Celia asked.

_The skies swarmed with the numbers of the Featherborne. Ballistae, proud and ready on the castle walls… _The voice persisted, in her head, but not her own. Celia held her own head in her hands. She was all too familiar with the sensation of a mental passenger by this point- and she wasn't a fan of it.

"Get out," Celia ordered.

A small mote of light materialized in front Celia's chest at the same time she felt whatever presence was in her mind leave. The light zipped around, dancing freely in the air. Celia stared at it, then at the book, whose were now _blank_. On a hunch, she opened the book up, and the snapped it shut on the mote of light. When she opened the pages again, the text was back.

"That's weird," Celia said. "_Really cool_. But weird."


End file.
